I believe that nothing is new but what can be new and unique is your take on it. Finding topics for blogging or making videos can be tough. I want my content to be fresh and relevant. I also want it to provide value. If the content I create is not providing value, I am just making noise. There is enough noise out there without my addition to it, so I do my best to find topics that I can provide value by talking about.
When I run out of ideas or can’t decide on a topic, I use tools to research topics to determine their relevancy. These tools not only help me find ideas, they help me decide how I should approach it.
BuzzSumo: http://buzzsumo.com/
Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Jerad-Hill-1
Answer The Public: https://answerthepublic.com/
Feedly: https://feedly.com/
Do you have any tools or ideas for finding topics? Share them in the comments section below.
I originally created this as a video, but have made some changes to my Youtube channel. This is the transcript of that video that I edited and posted here for you to read. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Hey, what’s up, its Jerad. And I have a highly requested topic. I get asked this all the time when I run into people and they’re asking me about the videos or the blogs that I post. And that is how I find topics. So, this is Three Ways To Find Video or Blog Topics. Now, I’m constantly needing to find new topics because I run out of them. I’ve talked about before that I have this, like, extreme, kind of, BS meter that I can only talk about things that don’t provide value for so long before I really start to feel like, I need to make a change. Now, that happened when I started vlogging. I felt like, you know, sometimes I might make an interesting vlog, and other times, I was just like trying to film something for the sake of filming something. And so, I feel like when I put content out there that there needs to be value, and how can you keep coming up with topics? Like, how can you find things? It requires research. I mean, you look at all the popular blogs and YouTube channels out there that talk about specific topics, and I guarantee you, they’re doing research, or they have researchers of their own that do it for them.
So, here are some things that you can definitely do to find topics. You can go to a website called BuzzSumo, and I’m linking to all these things down below for you, so, you can check them out. And then on my blog, there will be those links as well. So, you can make sure to check out the extra resources that will be available on my website. Link is down in the description below. So, BuzzSumo, you basically can ask any…you could put in any search term, or phrase, or topic, and you can see how often it’s being shared on the web, like what kind of buzz there is around this. It’s great because you can, kind of, get an idea on whether or not a topic is worth talking about or writing about because you can see what kind of buzz is happening around it. Not only that, but you can see what the titles of those articles, or those blog posts, or those social media shares, and stuff like that are, and it, kind of, gives you validation as to whether or not that idea is worth talking about.
You can see what other people are saying about it as well. So, it helps in the research process because you might start out with a topic like blogging, so, you type in blogging and you start to see all the recent buzz on blogging. And you start to see what people are writing about, maybe that, kind of, leads you down, like, well, talking about blogging is like a huge, kind of, wide range thing. Like, how do I get more specific? Well, you know, maybe you’re wondering if people are still blogging or if it still makes sense to blog. Or will blogging ever died, like is that a thing that will last forever? Will people continue to blog? So, you’re now, kind of, going down this trail of trying to find something more specific to where you can answer a specific question or talk about a specific, like, facet of a topic, instead of being extremely wide. Like, why should you blog or something like that. Like in this video, I’m talking about here’s three ways to find new topics, because that’s obviously a thing that anybody who’s blogged more than a couple of times is gonna run into. So, BuzzSumo helps you, not only find potential new ideas, but also validate ideas, or even maybe figure out a better way maybe that’s an idea, but with a little bit of research, you can find the better approach for that idea, the better way to deliver information on that idea.
Another one is Quora. Quora is, kind of, a question-and-answer website where people post a question, hoping to get an answer from somebody who has information on that topic. It’s been a lot of fun for me because I follow specific topics, I answer questions whenever I can, and then sometimes, I even ask questions of my own to, kind of, get some information out of people. Now, I typically ask questions in the form of wanting people’s opinions. So, I might already know the answer to it, but I want to know what other people think about it. Quora is a great place for that. Simply go and sign up for an account, follow a bunch of topics that are interesting to you, and you’ll start to see questions. And those are things that, you know, people need to know that they want to know. And they are topics that could be answered in a video or in a blog post, or an article, or something like that. So, you can get an idea by paying attention to and seeing what other people are asking. Questions that come up often or even questions that have a lot of different answers to are great opportunities for you to provide clarity and not…I mean, you can answer, they’re on Quora of course, but you can take that topic and you can make a video or make a blog post about it as well.
Another one is AnswerThePublic. I love AnswerThePublic because you go there, you type in maybe a topic like blogging, or something like that, or, you know, skateboarding, or anything, and you get all of these different types of questions that people are asking out there on the internet about this. And some of them are very basic and not even relevant, but there are a lot of them that… I mean, you can take the topic of skateboarding and you’ve instantly got, you know, 20 or 30 ideas right there that you can go off and, you know, produce video content, produce articles or blogs. AnswerThePublic is fantastic.
So, between these three different sites, you’re definitely not gonna run out of ideas. I mean, there’s so many ideas in just using these three different sites. But I did want to add a bonus which is Feedly. Feedly is a website that allows you to follow blogs or different websites that post articles, so that you can, kind of, follow topics. And I subscribe to a lot of different websites on Feedly. So, what that allows me to do is, kind of, instead of having to go to all these websites, one at a time and view their recent articles, their articles are pulled into Feedly. I can categorize them based on the topics, or my, you know, what I’m interested in. And then I can see all their recent articles and blog posts and whatnot right there.
I can see things that people are posting about, questions. I can go and check out those blogs. I could see the comments that are down below which typically, is also a great place to farm for topics. Because if somebody posts something like, you know, say, I did a blog post on, you know, three ways to find video or blog topics. And then somebody down…like many people down in the comment section was asking a similar comment or a similar question, I could…that’s a potential another video idea or another blog idea right there. So, you can even find ideas in the comment section of other blogs from popular websites that you follow. And Feedly makes it easy for you to follow those websites and get all of that content into one place. And Feedly has a really nice smartphone app, so, you can even just be scrolling websites and, kind of, seeing what is new out there on the fly without having to go into web browsers. And remember, you know, all your bookmarks, your bookmark bar gets out of control. Feedly is just a much easier way to, kind of, keep all that stuff together. So much so that I pay for Feedly Pro because I think it’s well worth it, to have all my stuff across multiple devices and have those extra features. Feedly Pro definitely adds value to my life.
If you like this post, consider subscribing to my newsletter. If you have a resource, share it down in the comment section below. I would love new resources, and also, just to see what some of you out there are using to find new ideas. Definitely, if you have a blog or a YouTube channel, share that down below as well. I’d love to see what you’re working on. And that’s gonna do it for today’s video. Hope to see you back next time.